


Numbered Minutes

by K_Hanna_Korossy



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5778406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_Hanna_Korossy/pseuds/K_Hanna_Korossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't know exactly how many minutes Don had left, and that was a math problem Charlie couldn't understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numbered Minutes

_Appeared in_ Our Favorite Things 25 _(2009), Elan Press_  
  


Most of life was about numbers, but not this. 

Charlie Eppes chewed on his last piece of garlic bread and watched with great contentment as his dad and brother argued. Not an infrequent occurrence in their house--and there _were_ numbers for that--but the teasing affection in Don’s tone, that was pretty new. In fact, after growing up mostly without Don in his life, nearly everything about him was still pretty new to Charlie. He just liked this side of his brother the most and saw it the least. 

“Look, if you’re not enjoying it, we can leave. I won’t stay, either.”

“Oh, come on, Dad, like you said, those are expensive tickets. You’d better stay and watch the whole thing.” 

“Well…then you could leave. We could take separate cars.” 

“It’s just wasted on me.”

The FBI wasn’t all to blame for his brother’s seriousness, Charlie had eventually figured out. It didn’t help, all the bad things Don had seen on the job over the years, but it wasn’t what had made him such a stranger to Charlie in the first place. He’d done that, he and his math. It was the only regret he had about his gift. Well, that and…

But there was no point dwelling on that. At Don’s sigh of exasperation, Charlie grinned and kept chewing. Who knew family could be a spectator sport? 

“Okay, how about this, you come with me next week and…I’ll go with you to a ballgame the week after.” 

Don frowned. “You love baseball--how is that a fair deal?”

Alan shrugged good-naturedly. “It was worth a try.” 

His brother actually laughed at that. “You’re really something, you know that?”

And the look on their dad’s face in response, the love and pride as he glanced from one son to the other, there were no numbers to express that, either, and Charlie couldn’t have cared less. 

The doorbell rang, and Don noticeably brightened. “I’ll get it. You just…don’t hold that thought, Dad.” 

Alan made a face at him, and Charlie snorted, then put his hand up defensively as his dad’s glare turned on him. “It wouldn’t hurt you to go, either, Charlie.” 

“Symposium, remember?”

“Yeah. Convenient timing, if you ask me,” Alan grumbled. There was a murmur of voices from the hallway, and he quickly grabbed a few dirty plates and disappeared with them into the kitchen. Company, Charlie realized, and collected the glasses. 

They came out to find Don and another man just coming in the opposite doorway of the dining room. Alan was drying his hands on a dishtowel, and Charlie gave his a rub against his shirt. It needed washing anyway. 

“Charlie,” Don was saying, “Mr. Vendt is here to see you.” 

Charlie looked over the new arrival with interest, taking in a tall, well-built frame--6’2” at least--piercing eyes, close-cropped dark hair. Nothing noteworthy except for the eyes, which almost made him uncomfortable in their intensity. But he smiled and moved around the table to shake hands. “Mr. Vendt. Nice to meet you.” 

He caught Don’s narrowing eyes only from the corner of his vision. “I…thought you said you knew Charlie,” he said to the new arrival. 

And that was when everything went very, very wrong. 

Vendt and Don seemed to move at the same time, but Vendt had been ready. Charlie barely had time to realize there was a gun in his hand before it went off. 

Not that the soft _crack_ meant anything to him. It was the sight of his brother lurching suddenly, his sharp movement becoming clumsy, that told Charlie he’d just seen his brother get shot. 

At that angle, speed, and trajectory…

“Don!” That was their dad, rushing around the table toward them. 

Don was still on his feet, still reaching for his gun even as a stain of red grew on his shirt just above his jeans, just where Charlie had expected it to. He stared at it numbly. Approximately nine pints of blood in the adult human body, spreading at that rate--

Vendt intercepted Don’s reach, yanking his gun out of its holster and his cell phone from his belt. The jarring was enough to break Don’s tenuous balance, and he started to topple, surprise still on his face, and growing anger. He was already bent over, his frame shrunk to five-and-a-half feet, and with that angle of fall, it would drop him squarely against one of the dining room chairs. Charlie uttered a dismayed sound.

Alan reached his son at that moment and grabbed him, easing him the rest of the way down, away from the chair. He said something to Don too softly for Charlie to hear, then glared up at Vendt with a venom Charlie didn’t know his dad had in him. “Why are you here?”

Not raging at what he’d done, nor why he did it. Why was he there, and the question startled Charlie out of his calculations. Vendt was still there and Don wasn’t dead, which meant a purpose. 

Don wasn’t dead. Hurt but not dead. Clutching at his dad’s sleeve and trying to get up even as Alan held him down with a single hand on his shoulder, while that stain grew at a predictable rate. Charlie shook himself, backtracked. Don was hurt, not dead. That was the part that mattered, and fixed on that idea, he finally started to move, to creep closer and lean down and try to do…something to help. Don was hurt. 

Vendt grabbed his arm, and Charlie stared at him in confusion. Why _was_ he there?

“I need your son.” He was talking to Alan. His grip hurt, too much pressure over a small area of skin. Charlie winced. 

“Yeah, well, you’ve done what you needed to, now go away.” 

Vendt shook his head. “Not that one. He’s just the incentive. I need you, Dr. Eppes, and the rules are simple: you help me, then you can get help for your brother.” 

Charlie stared at him. 

“You’re insane,” Alan seethed from the floor. “Charlie’s not going to help you while his brother’s lying bleeding on the floor.” 

“He will if he wants him to live. Until I get what I want, no one’s going anywhere or getting any kind of help.” 

Red now soaked half of Don’s shirt. Charlie calculated trajectory again, superimposed it over what he remembered of human anatomy. Through intestine and bowel, probably exit wound on the back. Bleeding at least at the rate of…no, Alan had just folded one of the cloth napkins and pressed it against the entrance wound. That would reduce blood flow--

“Let me take my son out of here and you can stay with Charlie. He can help you with whatever you need.” It took Charlie a moment to realize Alan was giving him an anguished look, but he didn’t know why. The idea made sense, because at the rate Don was bleeding still plus infection from intestinal damage…

“No.” The whisper from Don stilled his thoughts. “Dad, no. Charlie…”

He moved to kneel again next to his brother but the grip on his arm tightened. Anger rose up in him suddenly and Charlie yanked himself away. Vendt let him but stayed there right next to him as Charlie sank to his knees. There was blood on Alan’s legs now that would have to be accounted for in his calculations, too. 

“Charlie.” Don’s grip on his wrist was weaker than Vendt’s by several degrees, but Charlie couldn’t have broken it if he tried. “Do what he says.” Don was pale, almost as white as the part of his shirt that was still white. “Don’t worry…’bout me, just…get outta this alive.” 

He nodded solemnly. He could feel Don’s heartbeat against his skin, rushing along at over a hundred at least. Don was hurt, hurting. 

“You’re running out of time, Dr. Eppes.” 

Charlie sucked in a breath, his lungs telling him there wasn’t enough air in the room even as his brain insisted there was. Another tug of his arm, and he dragged his eyes away from Don, up to their dad. Alan’s face was strained but he nodded encouragingly. “Go on, Charlie. We’ll be okay.” 

“I cut the phone lines, so don’t bother trying to call out,” that intrusive voice came again from above. “Besides, I hear one cop, and I finish the job. And if you disappear, Dr. Eppes is going to meet the same fate as his brother.” One shoe poked at Don’s leg, but he didn’t react, eyes closed and breathing fast. Hurt but not dead, Charlie repeated to himself. Hurt but not dead. 

And he was the only one who could help. 

Charlie’s mind cleared with that one objective, and he gently unhooked Don’s fingers from his wrist and stood, suddenly calm. He couldn’t quite look at Vendt’s face, but he addressed himself to the lapel of the man’s jacket.

“What do you want me to do?”

*****

The data nearly filled the notebook. Usually that would have excited him, the challenge of sorting through it and making sense of raw information, turning it into something elegant and useful. Now, it shook him. 

“So you want me to…go through all this material and figure out where this guy you’re looking for is right now?”

“Yes.” 

They’d relocated to his study, the laptop humming beside him. His cell phone was in the top desk drawer, the real reason Charlie had chosen that room, but until he had some plan, he wasn’t about to try anything and maybe get them all killed. He needed time to think, and while he was thinking he might as well do the math. Except….

Charlie swiveled in his chair away from the desk and shook his head. 

“I can’t do this.” 

Vendt’s voice hardened. “That’s not what I heard.”

“Look,” Charlie snapped the notebook shut. “Human behavior is predictable…to some extent. But all the geographic profiling I’ve done for the FBI has involved criminal behavior, with crimes setting very definite patterns of behavior and thinking. I can’t just take where any guy eats and has lived and shops and figure out from that where he’s going to be today.”

“He’s a criminal, too.” 

Charlie’s eyes snapped up in surprise to Vendt’s face. He hated those eyes. “He is?” A bad guy was looking for a bad guy? He’d just assumed… But you should never assume, should you? 

“Mob boss,” Vendt said tersely. “Bad enough for you?”

“Oh.” Charlie stared down at the notebook. That might work. That meant not only a criminal mindset but also a business one, and that could involve very specific… He shook himself, glanced up at Vendt. “May I ask _why_ you’re looking for a mob boss?”

“No.” 

Which told him a lot right there. He’d guessed from the start, when Vendt had thrust the notebook at him and told him he wanted Charlie to find someone for him, that it probably wasn’t a long-lost brother he was looking for. The odds were overwhelming in favor of him searching for a target, especially with the skill with a gun he’d shown and his lack of hesitation in using it. Which meant Charlie would be finding someone just so he could be killed. A mob boss, but still. 

There came a raw gasp from the other room, and Alan’s voice first rising to talk over it, then falling quietly again. Twelve minutes had gone by since Don had been shot, and with blood loss… Charlie had to yank himself away from the thought. That wouldn’t help, and Don needed help. And for that, Charlie needed to find a mob boss to be killed. The room blurred for a minute, and grimacing, Charlie brushed at his eyes. There wasn’t time for that now, either. 

He looked up at Vendt, and it was effort to talk around the lump that had appeared in his throat. “Okay.” 

He got to work. 

Actually, the data was surprisingly well organized, not difficult to turn into variables he could enter into the logarithm. Vendt had been thorough, with every last detail of their mystery subject’s life cataloged. If they’d had half of that to go on in that serial killer case Charlie had worked on with Don, they would have caught the guy a lot sooner. Charlie added numbers feverishly to the blackboard he’d risen to scribble on. Homes, entertainment, business locations…

And then he hit the wall.

Charlie stared at the board, then at the notebook with growing unease. Flipped back through the last few pages, then forward. Lowered his hand. Everything was there about the guy’s life, everything. There was no reason it shouldn’t be working. And yet…

Okay, the serial killer case had been clear. The killer’s signature had stayed the same in every case, his killing style and goals. Rape, suffocation, staging, victim location: those were the variables Charlie had used to track him down. He had a lot more to go on now…so why wasn’t it working?

It hit him slowly, like non-math variables always did. Larry was usually good for that, to point them out when Charlie didn’t see them, but he was on his own now and it taken a little time. But there it was: behavior. In all these notes about places and times and habits, there just wasn’t enough about behavior, about what the subject did and what that said about him, to plot the trajectory of his next move. 

It was an impossible equation, one he couldn’t solve. And one he had to solve to help Don. 

Charlie’s gaze went to Vendt, who had grown bored of watching him write and had turned away to examine the books on Charlie’s bookshelf. Perhaps sensing the change in Charlie, he turned back now, eyes cold and contemplative. “Problem, Dr. Eppes?”

Charlie licked dry lips. “Uh, no, I’m just…thinking. You can’t rush this.” 

Vendt put up his hands defensively. “Wouldn’t dream of it. It’s not my brother out there.” A jerk of the head toward the dining room. 

Charlie actually hadn’t heard Don in a while, and while each agonized groan earlier had cut through him and scattered his thoughts, the quiet scared him even more. Forgetting the problematic equation, Charlie stepped toward the door.

“Dr. Eppes?”

“I’m going to see my brother,” he said flatly, not waiting for permission, not turning to see Vendt’s reaction. He wouldn’t stop Charlie, not if he wanted Charlie’s help. 

He strode out the door, back to the dining room. 

The floor was bare. Bloody but empty. Had Alan gone to get Don help somehow, after all?

Barely hearing the echo of footsteps behind him, Charlie stepped forward uncertainly, then caught the movement from the living room beyond. He should have known better; Alan wouldn’t have left with Charlie still there, sacrificing one son for the other. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been busy. 

Don was stretched out on the sofa now, his feet propped on Alan’s lap and covered by both the tablecloth and the afghan off the coach. It hid the blood, and Charlie was grateful for that. Still, Don looked a lot worse as he lay there panting, one hand tucked under a face creased with suffering. His hair was curling like it did when it was damp, this time from perspiration, and his eyes were already gaining that sunken look of the seriously ill. Charlie found himself counting breaths, and stopped. He didn’t need to know those numbers to be certain his brother was running out of time. 

“Charlie?”

His father’s voice, quiet and firm. Always steady, and Charlie swallowed as he looked up to meet those kind eyes, needing to borrow some of that calm. Alan looked frightened, and old, but still he almost managed a smile for his youngest son. 

“He’s holding his own. You know how stubborn your brother is.” 

Charlie nodded dumbly. It was one of the first things he’d learned about Don. There was still so much he didn’t know about the man, however, even though Don had been back more than a year now. Charlie often didn’t know where to look, and Don didn’t seem to know how to show him, so it had all been hit-and-miss those last few months as they’d started spending more time together. 

“How’s the problem coming?”

Charlie had to replay the question in his mind before he understood it. “Oh, uh, it’s going okay.”

His father’s eyes darted over to the presence Charlie could feel at his back, then again to him. Alan knew the truth. “That’s fine, Charlie,” he said quietly, encouragingly. “We both know you’re doing the best you can.” 

No. His best would have had Vendt out of their house by now and Don at the hospital. It wouldn’t have been him struggling while his brother lay in the living room…dying, and his dad there with Don’s blood on his hands, smiling sadly at them both. His best meant he would’ve found a solution no matter how difficult the problem was, even if it meant…

Even if it meant the answer wasn’t in the math. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut at the sudden revelation, then reopened them. 

Alan silently nodded. 

Charlie turned away abruptly, skirting Vendt and heading back toward the study. Only a moan from the couch pulled him up short. Charlie glanced back fearfully, saw Alan pressing one hand against Don’s middle, the other patting the feet that rested in his lap. Don trembled, then lapsed back into sleep, or unconsciousness. 

Charlie had to find that answer, and fast. 

He was already typing numbers into the computer as Vendt came in after him, and after studying the screen for a minute, his captor backed off again to hover by the door.

Charlie’s fingers kept moving, the numbers a meaningless scrawl across the screen. Okay, the equation had no solution. Vendt would never believe that, which meant Charlie had to make up a solution. Their guest wouldn’t know until it was too late that Charlie had given him bad information. 

But that was assuming he took Charlie’s word and just walked away, and that was another bad assumption. The fact was that Vendt had every reason not to believe him, nor to leave witnesses behind. He thought Charlie could find his target, which meant he’d probably take Charlie with him just in case, but Don and Alan… 

Odds, permutations, calculations rolled through Charlie’s head like an obscuring mist, trying to overwhelm and hide the fear as quickly as it rose. There were still angles he could try to make Vendt’s data work, and Charlie grabbed a pencil from the desktop, poised to start writing on the nearest piece of paper. Maybe he could still figure this out, after all. He just needed--

Time. 

No. Don didn’t have time. Those precious minutes were counting out what was left of his life, and those were the only numbers that mattered now. The solution wasn’t in math, which was what Alan had been trying to tell him, even if Charlie was scared to death at the thought. He had to find another way. 

It took a supreme act of will, but Charlie dropped the pencil and started typing again, more gibberish even as his eye automatically picked up patterns in the random numbers. Okay. Maybe he could take out Vendt somehow. There was a handgun in Alan’s room, and Charlie was pretty sure his brother had a back-up gun somewhere, too, but that might have been across the city for all that helped him now. Other weapons…he scanned the desktop and bookshelves for a candidate, calculating force and trajectory. No option carried a high probability of success, however, and he would just get them all killed if he tried and failed. No, maybe Don could have done it, but with him incapacitated, Vendt was the pro here and wouldn’t likely be taken out on his own terms. 

Which left Charlie’s. 

He grabbed his notebook, continued the same flow of meaningless numbers he’d been typing. Vendt came over to look at what he was doing again, then moved back to the bookshelves. Okay, the man wanted an equation: Charlie would give him one. Vendt would never know it was wrong until he got there and didn’t find his target. That would buy them a little time, whether Charlie was with him or not. 

But as for making sure Don and Alan were safe… Could he bluff Vendt maybe? Tell him he wouldn’t go with him if his family wasn’t left safely behind? No, Charlie just didn’t have enough bargaining chips to make that work. He couldn’t think of any reason he could give Vendt to leave witnesses behind, and if he couldn’t force the man, either, that meant he needed help. 

It was time to take a chance. 

A stolen glance told him Vendt was still facing mostly away from him, listening rather than watching him. Charlie kept scribbling numbers while his other hand dipped lower and tugged at a desk drawer. It stuck a little, then silently gave, sliding out a few inches. Perfect. Charlie’s hand slid inside, fumbling for the phone. 

Phones were invasive and distracting, and he hadn’t carried his until Don had started needing him on cases. Even so, Charlie left it in the desk whenever possible, a fact for which he was very grateful now. But it also meant he wasn’t as familiar with the device as he might have been, and Charlie hoped he remembered the configuration right as he pushed buttons by feel. And that the desk drawer would muffle the slight beeps. At least his brother’s office had been one of the two numbers he’d entered into speed dial. With a minimum of buttons, he had an open line. Charlie slipped his hand back out and laid his arm over the cracked drawer, concealing it. 

“I think I’ve got the pattern almost figured out.” 

Vendt stepped closer. “Good. That’ll give you an address?”

He turned away from the desk, the drawer squarely behind his chair, to address Vendt. “That’ll give me a general location, probably a radius of a block or two. You’ll have to narrow it down based on what you know about the subject in order to find him.”

Vendt frowned, nodded. “Fine.” 

Charlie cleared his throat, tilted his head. “Then you’ll leave us alone and let us get Don help? He’s lost a lot of blood.” 

“As soon as I have that location, you can call anyone you want.” 

He hadn’t been watching the man’s eyes, but he could hear the insincerity in his tone. But Charlie just nodded blandly. “Okay.” He turned back to his nonsensical equation. “Um, I’m going to need a map,” he added over his shoulder. 

“You got one around here?”

Here was his chance. “In the living room,” Charlie said nonchalantly. “My dad’ll help you.”

A hesitation. “Fine. Stay here and keep working. You try anything and I’ll finish the job I started with your brother.” 

He raised one hand in tacit agreement and surrender, listened to Vendt leave the room. And then he scrambled for the phone. 

_“Charlie?”_

__Terry, thank God. He’d hoped one of his brother’s co-workers would still be there. “His name is Vendt,” he said urgently. There was no time. “He shot Don--Dad’s looking after him in the living room. He wants me to find somebody for him.”

_“Can you drag it out for ten more minutes?”_

__Ten more minutes of blood loss…but his dad would have stopped that by now. No, it would just be infection spreading. Charlie squashed down that calculation. “Yes.”

_“Do it. Try to get him to leave by himself, but if you can’t, just go with him. We’ll take care of the rest. Just don’t try anything, Charlie.”_

__“Okay.” Vendt’s steps were in the hallway and Charlie shoved the phone back, the line still open. Okay. Ten more minutes, he could do that. It was a relief that someone had finally told him what to do, someone with more experience in these things than he had. Terry wasn’t Don, but she would know what to do. Just ten more minutes, and don’t try anything. Like he had a clue what to try against a probable hitman who could eat him for lunch. Don would’ve been able to take him, but Don…Don…

The numbers nearly battered him, desperate to erase that thought. Bacterial replication, blood loss calculation, the Doppler effect of the approaching footsteps, the odds that they would get out of this alive. The numbers offered escape, a way to leave all this behind and disappear into something safe, a place he knew. A place his brother wasn’t badly hurt and counting on him to save all of them. 

Charlie squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Here’s the map.” 

A flurry of air beside him as something was laid out on the desk. Charlie ignored it. 

“Hey, you listening to me? You’d better get to it--your brother’s not looking so good.” 

Both Don and Alan had tried to talk to him when Mom was dying and Charlie was immersed in P v. NP. _She’s not doing too well--you should really go see her. Don’t you want to spend time with her while you can?_ They’d had no idea that argument had only driven him farther into his haven, away from a loss he couldn’t deal with. 

But he hadn’t been able to do anything for her, helpless in anything but the numbers that he spilled onto the blackboard. This time…this time there was a way he could help Don. He just had to want it hard enough. 

Charlie’s eyes opened. He did. 

It took a force of effort to drag himself back to the present, to the dangerous face that hovered inches from his and the knowledge that the lives of the two most important people in his world lay in the balance of what he did. Charlie took a deep breath, swallowed, and said faintly, “I’m ready.” 

It had already been three minutes. Finding a ruler took one more. Plotting coordinates both real and completely made-up on the map, five. And then Charlie pointed a bloodless finger at a spot on the map. 

“There.” 

“All right.” Vendt nodded. “All right, good work. Come on.” And he hauled Charlie to his feet by one arm. 

He let himself be marched out into the living room. Don looked the same as he had before. Alan had grown more drawn. Charlie avoided his eyes this time. 

“All right, here’s what we’re going to do. Dr. Eppes--”

It was important, what Vendt was saying, but Charlie quickly lost the thread, hearing only a jumble of sounds. Instead, his gaze went around the room, vectors drawn wherever he looked, force plotted and measured. 

He stopped at the freestanding lamp, frowning. It wasn’t where it had been, near the window and the easy chair. Now it stood by the sofa, a half-foot from Alan’s hand. 

Questioningly, he looked up at his father, who gave an imperceptible nod. Charlie’s eyes swung back to the lamp, gauging height and mass. Maybe…

Vendt had finished and was reaching for him again. So, he was taking Charlie too, like he’d expected. “I’ll just get my coat,” Charlie said numbly, sliding his eyes away from the man but still hearing the soft swish of his jacket as Vendt reached into the pocket. Maybe human behavior was more predictable than he’d thought. 

Charlie took a step forward, jostling the lamp as he went so it was at the angle for maximum force. Then as he passed it, he whispered, “Now.” 

They moved in unison like they’d practiced it, a retired city planner and a math savant against a professional killer. The lamp swung forward hard with the combined force of their shove in a beautiful arc right toward where Vendt was standing. The man didn’t see it coming. Probably hadn’t expected anything from a retiree and a professor. The hard edge of the lampshade chopped him in the side of the neck, the decorative brass ball at the top following with a blow to the head as he started to go down. 

And a moment later, their captor lay sprawled on the living room floor, a gun tumbling from his outstretched hand. 

Alan jumped up and snatched it from the ground, but Vendt wasn’t moving. Charlie stared at him, then up at his father. 

“That was good work, Charlie,” Alan said fervently, his hand clasping Charlie’s shoulder. “Listen to me, Son--you need to go next door and ask the Baldaccis to call for help. Can you do that?”

Calling for help. He’d already done that, hadn’t he? It was ten minutes. Time was relative, but it had been long enough. The door--it was outside. Charlie nodded and moved toward the door, dazed. Opening it, he stepped out into the darkness. 

Someone grabbed him, pulling him to one side. 

He blinked into Terry’s face. “Charlie, where is he?”

He who? He frowned at her. 

She frowned back. “Charlie? Are you okay?”

Terry. She was help. “Don needs help.” He couldn’t feel his lips move. 

“I know, we’re going to help him, but where’s the man who shot him?”

Charlie shook his head, trying to clear it. “He… Dad and I took care of him.” 

Terry stared at him a moment longer, then he was being pulled back into the house at the tail end of a rush of people. Into the living room, where there was already a small crowd around the sofa and another around Vendt. Alan was talking to two men in suits. Charlie tried to find his brother through the mass of people surrounding him and failed. 

Terry’s hand on his arm again. “Charlie, he’s right here,” she said quietly, and pulled him over to the end of the sofa, levered him down into a crouch. _Shock_ , someone whispered, and then Charlie lost track of them altogether at the sight of his brother’s half-open eyes. 

They warmed when they caught sight of him, like Don had finally found something he’d been looking for. Charlie felt his confusion thaw under that look, and swallowed. “Don…”

A stir of movement. His brother’s hand, trying to move toward him. Paramedics were working on the rest of him, but Charlie didn’t look, just took the hand, feeling a galloping pulse under his fingertips. Don’s eyes moved just as heavily as his hand. “Did good,” he whispered. 

Charlie knew he was supposed to make a joke now, or say thanks, or return the compliment, but no words came together in his head, and the numbers were just a jumble. So he just squeezed Don’s hand, watching him as his eyes shut again, and then the paramedics claimed even that part of his brother. Charlie inched back and watched as they finished prepping Don, then moved him to a gurney. Someone draped a blanket around Charlie’s shoulders, and he clutched it one-handed.

“Come on, Son. Let’s keep your brother company.” 

Rough-voiced and tired words but gently spoken. Charlie stared up at his father, then let Alan nudge him to his feet. With an arm around his shoulders, his dad led them outside, after Don. 

He left the house and Vendt behind without a second glance or thought. What mattered wasn’t there, or in his head, but right there around him. 

And there wasn’t any other place he wanted to be. 

*****

He didn’t so much wake as become more conscious, drawn by soft voices. Not conscious enough to open his eyes or talk but awake enough to start to make sense of things, he lay on an unfamiliar surface covered by a blanket not his own, and passively listened. 

“I don’t know. Terry says she found a lot of equations in the room and a marked map in Vendt’s pocket. We’ll have to ask Charlie.” 

“I bet he didn’t.” The voice was almost too soft to hear. 

“Maybe.” It was his father’s voice. “I don’t think he had enough time. Even so, it was close. It was close.” 

“I’ll be okay.” 

Don. Charlie tried to wake up, to say something to his brother, but couldn’t seem to move. 

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re fine but the sofa’s gonna need re-covering--someone spilled a lot of blood on it.”

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I’m just glad you’re all right. Thanks to Charlie--you should’ve seen your brother. He knew exactly what to do.” 

Not true, Charlie protested silently. He’d been making it up the whole way, terrified. 

Don’s response was too quiet to make out.

“Only at the end--I think that’s when it all hit him. He’s been out on his feet ever since we got here--I finally got him to lie down a few hours ago. But Terry said when she called him, he sounded completely in charge.” There was a soft sound of movement, and then his father’s hand stroked Charlie’s hair back. “You’d have been proud of him, Donny.”

He strained to hear the whispered reply. “Always have been.” 

He retreated from the conversation at that, not liking eavesdropping, not sure what to do with that praise. But it felt like a warm and comfortable blanket over him, his dad’s love and his brother’s pride, and he nestled into it. He could figure out the rest later; there was nothing else he needed to know or understand just then besides that. 

And to the murmur of his loved ones’ voices, Charlie drifted back to sleep. 

The End


End file.
